Gold Member

Clearly, once again, President Obama demonstrated that he is in charge and action has been ongoing for weeks. He was confident, in command of the facts, and set out a reasonable plan to fight this onslaught by BP. And it is clearly time for the senate to pass Obama's energy bill. The president was absolutely correct about the fact that oil is a finite and dangerous energy source. I urge all of you to contact you senators to urge the energy bil be passed.it is also time to nationalize oil companies who are headquartered in the U.S. Their greed, stupidity and calumny were all too apparent in their testimony to the house today.

Clearly, once again, President Obama demonstrated that he is in charge and action has been ongoing for weeks. He was confident, in command of the facts, and set out a reasonable plan to fight this onslaught by BP. And it is clearly time for the senate to pass Obama's energy bill. The president was absolutely correct about the fact that oil is a finite and dangerous energy source. I urge all of you to contact you senators to urge the energy bil be passed.it is also time to nationalize oil companies who are headquartered in the U.S. Their greed, stupidity and calumny were all too apparent in their testimony to the house today.

Click to expand...

How will nationalizing oil companies resolve the very clear compliance and regulations enforcement issues that are very neatly being swept under the rug? The MMS, one of the agencies tasked with regulating natural resource extraction, has had major corruption issues in the past, and the government shouldering costs of business such as insurance premiums will surely have to come out of taxpayer pockets. Unless you don't mind higher taxes.

I didn't hear the same speech you did. If his lips are moving, he is lying. He has lost the confidence of the American People as evidenced in the polls. He is acting like a kid with his parents check book, spending EVERYTHING...even money we don't have.

Gold Member

He was confident, in command of the facts, and set out a reasonable plan to fight this onslaught by BP...it is also time to nationalize oil companies who are headquartered in the U.S. Their greed, stupidity and calumny were all too apparent in their testimony to the house today.

Click to expand...

The U.S. government doesn't have the money to buy them, but they probably will be able to afford BP soon - which ironically was once owned by the British government.

Watched the televised message. I think as usual he tried, but he is still being "too nice" for me.

"Nationalization" is not a buy out. "Nationalization" is a take over for the public good or at least that is what they want to convince everybody.

I do not think that now is the time for this, however I do think that this option should remain open and a major investigation launched against the whole corrupt bunch.

Many Countries have nationalized certain industries or corporations either temporarily or permanently and it is not uncommon. When it happens it is because a given industry under question is dealing dishonestly with the people of the given country. Now I know that this could be up for debate, but that is the intention and in some cases it has worked successfully.

The one thing we need is a realistic energy policy that begins a transition to renewable energy resources and we need to have this without placing the current energy producers in charge of the new sources. This is why we have nothing right now.

I have yet to read Obama's energy policy in full.

We now have the technology for clean high powered diesel vehicles powered by fuel sources that are renewable and obtaining equal or better mileage than what we have right now. Audi has raced diesels and has a V-10 powered R-8 that is as fast as a Ferrari. Ford has offered diesel power in many of it's models available here for decades in Europe, Chrysler Minivans have for many years been available with turbodiesel engines in Europe, but they are not sold in the United States. Chrysler/Jeep was well on the way to high tech when Bob Nardelli, the idiot who nearly bankrupted Fortune 500 Home Depot took over as the CEO of Chrysler and cancelled this in favor of more gas guzzling SUV's. GM was planning on dieselization of the Hummer H3 with a very high efficiency diesel that in testing had pushed the little SUV to nearl 30mpg numbers on the highway.

This is our own fault. We have had the technology to make considerable changes in how we fuel vehicles and we no right now how to eliminate a great deal of the pollution.

What we have done in the past 20 years is to allow major corporations (Big Oil in Particular) to do buy-backs of older more pollution prone vehicles so that they can trade these cars for cleaning up their own stack pollution.

We are right now getting what we deserve. We have trusted or entrusted a number of major corporations to place human welfare above profits. We see right now what they think of that idea and how they respect it.

This is where Nationalization comes in. We will only see it if some industries (big oil being one) do not start respecting people and the life of all living things. Remember, if the plants and animals go, we will be following soon behind!

Gold Member

^I think Europe's progress in fuel efficiency is partly due to foresight, but also due to necessity, with the high cost of fuel over here, lol (and lack of space on UK roads). Petrol in the UK is about £1.20 a litre - which would be £4.20 per US gallon? (3.5 litres?).

Audi's diesel-technology is great - they won Le Mans this year with the TDi powered R15.

You guys will probably be getting Fiat's efficient multiair units and JTD diesels in Chryslers before too long, tho.

VerifiedGold Member

Many Countries have nationalized certain industries or corporations either temporarily or permanently and it is not uncommon. When it happens it is because a given industry under question is dealing dishonestly with the people of the given country.

Click to expand...

In my experience, in the UK historically, with the bank crisis world wide and nearly with the US car industry, it is because the company is broke and some government considerd it is better to subsidise it than let it go out of business. Because it damages the economy if big companies go out of busines, whatever they have done in the past.

The one thing we need is a realistic energy policy that begins a transition to renewable energy resources and we need to have this without placing the current energy producers in charge of the new sources. This is why we have nothing right now.

Click to expand...

It is certainly one reason

We now have the technology for clean high powered diesel vehicles powered by fuel sources that are renewable and obtaining equal or better mileage than what we have right now.

Click to expand...

Thats the problem, we dont. Sure, we can make beautiful engines which run on fuels we can grow, but there is still the problem of where you would grow them. What food do you stop producing to make room? So far, attempts to produce biofuels have made matters worse not better.

This is our own fault. We have had the technology to make considerable changes in how we fuel vehicles and we no right now how to eliminate a great deal of the pollution.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. And the first step is to make vehicles smaller, half as heavy and using half as much fuel irrespective of what sort of fuel it it. then do the same trick again. The easiest way to reduce usage of fossil fuels is just not to waste them. The US needs a mandatory target to reduce energy consumption, and the target you are aiming at is average world energy consumption (which is tiny compared to US now). There is no proven alternative way of producing the amount of energy we use now.

We have trusted or entrusted a number of major corporations to place human welfare above profits. We see right now what they think of that idea and how they respect it.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but we have never done this. A company has only one aim, to make money any way it can. Governments sometimes make rules which force companies to behave in society friendly ways, but this has always always had to be imposed on companies. Traditionally companies have been allowed to make as much pollution or human suffering as they like and only very recently has change been forced upon them. This is the reason behind my own views of the oil spill. The US had it within its power to enforce better safety procedures. It did not do it. Instead it chose a contractor (BP) with a known bad safety record. What do you expect?

The US had it within its power to enforce better safety procedures. It did not do it. Instead it chose a contractor (BP) with a known bad safety record. What do you expect?

Click to expand...

Hence my feeling that insurance/risk coverage premiums will skyrocket for natural resource extraction until regulatory compliance enforcement is addressed and made, you know, effective. Simple things, like not allowing companies to drill if, you know, the designs they are showing you don't conform to best practices and they clearly don't have adequate measures for emergency preparedness.

In any case, nationalizing something as clunky as oil extraction - as FuzzyKen supports - will result in economic turbulence as the public is forced to bear a sudden massive spike in the operational costs of the government. This might either come in a massive issuance of bonds for the sake of raising money to cover operations, or in a higher tax rate.

Suppose it is nationalized, and suppose the goal is permanent control, or a semi-governmental board that controls operations. Interest rates on Treasury Bonds would surely jump because we already have a sizeable budget deficit that just got much much larger. Would Obama dare to raise taxes on the middle class to subsidize US Oil Co? Would he raise taxes yet again on the highest group and bypass the middle class. Would he raise taxes on both? Any of the three measures would lend further support to the Tea Party movement, eroding support for his own party. You would probably see a libertarian revolt, with Ayn Rand canonized and Atlas Shrugged elevated to Bible status within months.

Then there is a question of who would be running the company? Who would the board be composed of? Answer: mostly the same crew as before. Obama brought in Wall Streeters to the Dept. of Treasury, he'll bring in oil men to run the oil company - makes sense from a pragmatic point of view. But in doing so, he recreates the same principal-agent dilemma he had sought to avoid when nationalizing in the first place. In effect, nationalizing oil will simply institutionalize (and legitimize politically) the cartel who created and ran Big Oil in the first place.

As for countries that have nationalized big oil...the track record in terms of economic/environmental benefit has been spotty at best. Venezuela has nationalized not only oil, but food import, and Chavez has had to fight corruption and the massive inflation that has resulted from bottlenecks to food distribution that inefficient operations have caused. Food is literally rotting, untouched, in the ports. And you remember the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc? Pretty much everything was nationalized, and the entire region started to implode economically from the late 70's until the system's final collapse in the early 90's.

VerifiedGold Member

^I think Europe's progress in fuel efficiency is partly due to foresight, but also due to necessity, with the high cost of fuel over here, lol (and lack of space on UK roads). Petrol in the UK is about £1.20 a litre - which would be £4.20 per US gallon? (3.5 litres?).

Audi's diesel-technology is great - they won Le Mans this year with the TDi powered R15.

You guys will probably be getting Fiat's efficient multiair units and JTD diesels in Chryslers before too long, tho.

Click to expand...

I used to work for a few European auto makers and there is one big thing that's always left out of the comparison between US and EU fuel economy standards (and I don't think it's intentional):

Euro air quality and emmissions standards are horrible!

They're certainly better than they've been in the past, but many of those cars in Europe -- especially the ones made by the German automakers are horrible polluters. Sure they burn less fuel per mile they travel, but they spew pollution. Everywhere I lived in Europe every surface outside the home, be it bridges, buildings, tunnels, etc was covered constantly with a nasty layer of black soot.

That mess is not leftovers from the industrial revolution. So yeah American cars use more fuel, but they certainly are overall cleaner. You can go into the most densely populated city you can find and you'll never see that soot covering everything here.

Also, (and don't get me wrong I loved being able to drive fast) but those fuel standards companies like Audi mention are based on driving 55-60 mph. When you drive at 100-150 mph on the motorway and spend all of your time going from dead stop to all out in town, those fuel efficiency numbers go out the window entirely.